On Defense: Estonia's Stadium Oak

This Old Tree with Doug Still
On Defense: Estonia's Stadium Oak - Transcript
Season 3, Episode 5
December 31, 2025

Doug Still  00:00
You're listening to This Old Tree, the show about heritage trees and the human stories behind them, and a sponsored project of New England ISA.

Doug Still  00:14
An oak tree stands right smack dab in the middle of a soccer field, or football pitch, as it's known in the UK and parts of Europe. This football pitch can be found in Estonia, in the little town of Orissaare on the island of Saaremaa. 

[Music - "Saaremaa valss," Georg Ots]

Estonians actually call the field a stadium, even if there isn't a big arena or stands for spectators. It's all a bit confusing for an American. Anyway, local teams and the kids at the Youth Center across the street just play around the 150 year old oak tree, technically a Quercus robur with common names English oak, pedunculate oak, or common oak, as it's native to Europe. Games continue as if this was perfectly normal. The location of this long time member of the Orissaare community is generally taken in stride by residents, and perhaps adds to a home field advantage. 

But the tree has become much more than a local curiosity. In 2015 it won the European Tree of The Year contest, and thus became a source of Estonian national pride. It garnered nearly 60,000 votes, barely beating out the Great Plane of Tata of Hungary, as well as trees from Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK. How did a tree from tiny Estonia gain enough support to outcompete these other European powerhouses?

The answer lies, in part, with brilliant PR devised by a local arborist from Orissaare. His name is Heiki Hanso, an irrepressible man-on-a-mission to make his favorite tree famous. To find the rest of the answer, we'll need to look at the tree's legend and how it symbolizes something deep within the Estonian psyche - the need for defense from foreign invaders. But its people also have a love of trees and forests shaped by old folk tales as well as ancient views toward animism in the natural world. 

Here to help explain all this is Aliide Naylor, a British author and historian with family ties to Estonia. Aliide and I had the chance to travel to Estonia to meet in person, explore the story, and to interview Heiki Hanso as well as another lifelong resident, Andla Rüütel, the manager of Orissaare Sports School.

So come along to hear about the Staadioni Tamm, Estonia's Stadium Oak. I'm Doug still, and this is This Old Tree.

[Theme Song]

Doug Still  03:21
The Stadium Oak first came to my attention out of the blue when Aliide Naylor messaged me via Instagram in June. “Could you be interested in covering this oak in the middle of a football stadium in Estonia?” she asked, and included a link with some brief history. I looked her up, and Aliide’s resume is impressive. She is a British-Estonian journalist and author of 'The Shadow in the East: Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front' published by Bloomsbury in 2020. Her work has appeared in Politico Europe, New Statesman, The Times of London, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. I responded, and soon we were on Zoom discussing the Estonian tree. In addition to its status as winner of the European Tree of Year, she shared the basic outline of a captivating story, the tree’s legend.

Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union from 1944 through 1991, a very difficult time for most of its people. It was the second Soviet occupation actually. In the late 1940’s, the Soviets created the stadium in Orissaare, and Stalin’s tractors attempted to pull down the old oak tree in order to clear the field. But they couldn’t do it, the cables tied to the tree snapped. The oak stood its ground, and the workers gave up. The tree still stands today, a symbol of resistance to Russia.

That was all I needed to hear. To make a long story short, in November I was picking Aliide up in my rental car at the airport in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital. We planned a two hour drive to the island of Saaremaa to see the tree for ourselves in Orissaare. And without ever having met us, the tree’s arborist Heiki Hanso offered to put us up in his air bnb (confirm) since it was the off season and he had space. 

Leaving the airport, I remarked to Aliide about three flags flying at its entrance. The center one was the Estonian flag of course, with three colors - blue, black, and white. Aliide explained the colors symbolize a view of the landscape - blue for the sky, black for the dark forest, and white for snow. To the left was the flag for the European Union, of which Estonia has been a member since 2004. The other flag caught my attention - the flag of Ukraine, blue and yellow for sky above golden wheat fields. 

The show of support for Ukraine seems obvious once you understand where Estonia lies. It is on the eastern end of the Baltic Sea in northern Europe, a short ferry ride from Helsinki at the base of Finland. It is the northern-most Baltic country, along with Latvia and Lithuania. For Americans, Estonia is about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire put together. Apparently 15 Estonias would fit into the state of Texas (thank you Google). Several islands exist off its western coast, the largest being Saaremaa, about the size of my home state of Rhode Island. 

The main point here though, is that directly over the eastern border is its massive neighbor, Russia. St. Petersburg is just 87 miles or 140 kilometers away. That border is not only physically and psychologically crucial for Estonia, but also a stark divide between democratic Europe and an aggressive Russia. The fate of Ukraine in its war of defense against Russia weighs especially heavy on the minds of Estonians, as well as all of the countries that form the eastern border of Europe.The Ukrainian flag at the airport lets every visitor know that. 

Doug Still  07:19
The drive to Saaremaa was rainy but lovely, through forest and farmland. One speeding ticket and one ferry ride later we were in Orissaare by late afternoon.  Before heading to meet Heiki, we made a beeline to the Youth Sports Center where Aliide had set up an interview with a woman named Andla Ruutel, the manager of the Sports School. Born and raised in the town, Andla shared her perspective on the tree and its place in the community. Aliide conducted most of the interview, because Andla wasn’t confident about her English, although she answered in both English and Estonian. In the background, you can hear sounds of kids in the gym.

Aliide Naylor  07:57
Okay, so my first question that I only have in English is about this particular building here. Is this the core of the stadium that the Soviets started to build? Or is this a new construction?

Andla Rüütel (translated)  08:17
We are located in the Orissaare Sports Building, which is a 12 yr-old building. It is part of the Orissaare Youth Center which, as you saw, is basically full of children and young people from morning to night. Before Orissaare, or before this new sports building, we had a small gym. We saw it on our walk together, which was built in the 1960’s. 

If we go back in time, first of all, during the First Republic of Estonia, or in the 1930’s, there was the same square where the stadium is located in Orissaare. Then, the old gym was built, then this new sports building was built in 2013. 

Aliide Naylor  08:57
Okay, and what is your and your and your family's personal connection to the stadium? 

Andla Rüütel (translated)  09:06
Okay, I have a personal contact from childhood. Since I am an alumnus of Orissaare School, and I went to the Orissaare Community Gymnasium, we had all our physical education classes right there at the stadium. And to be completely honest, at the time we didn’t notice that this stadium was anything special. It was just that this tree was there and it was, like, natural. 

My husband is a football coach, and he has been doing sports since he was little. Their group has some nice memories of the stadium’s tree. In a football game, for example, they knew how to pass so that the ball would bounce off the tree and then move somewhere. And once there was even a story where the goalkeeper kicked the ball into play, hit the tree too hard, and it bounced back into the goal. That basically this oak has also made a goal.

Aliide Naylor  10:00
So you mentioned that you had your memories from childhood here.

Andla Rüütel  10:04
We have sports lessons there, but it was so normal for us. It was so normal, the tree in the middle of the stadium. It was nothing special.

Doug Still  10:26
Andla and the young people who’ve played football under the oak for decades may consider it normal, but its legend has reverberated for at least four generations. As site manager Andla wanted to know more, so she began digging for stories about the tree in old newspapers. Andla shared an article with Aliide from 1997 that records the memories of an old woman called Melania Tiivit. Apparently there used to be a traditional Estonian village swing attached to the tree in the 1930’s called a Külakiik. In the olden days, this type of large swing for multiple adults could be found on the village green of almost every rural town across Estonia. In addition to the swing, Tiivit said the big oak tree was a gathering place for both young and old, and people would dance beneath it during festivals. 

Aliide asked Andla about her research into the Soviet legend.

Aliide Naylor  11:24
Going back to the information that you've collected. So there was this popular myth that the rope broke during stadium construction, and you said that you rather believe the story that in the late 1940s when the stadium was being built, then the tractor’s power did not start. So somebody just decided to make the decision to let it stay, to symbolize the perseverance and tenacity of our athletes. So why do you believe this version of the story instead? Like, what in your research has led you to this conclusion?

Andla Rüütel (translated) 11:56
Okay, I read this from two different newspapers. The meaning of the sentences was the same in both newspapers, but the words were different. And the way of saying it had also changed over time. One story was told by an old man, the other by another person.  I don't know if I should believe this story or not. But I think it's a very good story to tell. I can understand that the construction workers had a problem. They didn't know whether to keep the tree or not.

And since they didn't manage to take it down, they just kept it. But the symbol is still great. Why can't it be... why does everything have to be conventional? It doesn't have to be…why can't it be a tree in the middle of the stadium? My main job is to manage the sports school, and our children's sports school is doing well in Estonia.

I don't think it was a bad idea for us to keep it. It's a strange stadium. It's not a good idea for the students of Orissaare to become Estonian champions, to go and play abroad. So I think this story is really great. It can be continued. You can make a symbol out of it. A story or a symbol has already been made out of it.

Doug Still  13:30
Does the tree receive any special care?

Andla Rüütel  13:40
Yes, sometimes in the evening you are seeing Heiki Hanso. He's the arborist.

Heiki Hanso  13:46
My name is Heiki Hanso. I live in Estonia, Saaremaa Island.

Doug Still  13:52
Because of steady rain and early darkness, Aliide and I skipped visiting the tree in the stadium and met Heike at his home that also serves as a summertime B&B. Blonde and blue-eyed, he met us on the porch with his two boys, Otto and Hugo, who were there with another young friend. The house was really cool. Live edge wood was everywhere, forming cabinets, countertops, and a centralized stairway that rose to the second floor. Support columns were whole tree trunks, including a large one next to the kitchen with foot-long branches left on it that Otto and Hugo used to climb to the ceiling. The home felt alive and magical. Heiki built it himself with extensive use of wood and materials repurposed from the tree business that he owns. The house says a lot about him, and a love of trees is not the only thing. I got the sense that using just his hands and ingenuity, Heiki is a guy that can make anything happen.

Straightaway, I asked him about the tree in Orissaare and what it’s called.

Heiki Hanso  14:55
The most famous Estonian tree is called Football Oak, Stadium Oak, or Orissaare Oak.

Doug Still  15:02
Orissara Oak, yes. And what's oak in Estonian? 

Heiki Hanso
Tamm, yes.

Doug Still
Tamm? 

Heiki Hanso
Tamm.

Doug Still
So in Estonian, you might say..

Heiki Hanso  15:11
Staadioni Tamm. [Staadioni Tamm] From here, this oak tree has been a part of our childhood, part of our sports-hood, if you may say so. And like every Orissaaran, people have been growing up with this tree. It's been there for nearly 200 years, we believe. So it's a historical tree for us, and it's a part of our community.

Doug Still  15:46
You've known it since you were a boy.

Heiki Hanso
Of course, yeah. 

Doug Still
Did you play football on that field… [Of course]... around the tree?

Heiki Hanso  15:53
A million times. Yeah, I have. I was also the guy, one of the guys who climbed up the tree to rescue the ball when it gets stuck there. It happened quite a few times.

Doug Still  16:09
Yes, right, and that was the beginning of your tree climbing career?

Heiki Hanso  16:12
Indeed, it was!

Doug Still  16:16
We had great fun getting to know Heiki during our first evening. He served us freshly caught perch for dinner, purchased from a local friend. While I’ve probably never had a whole fish on my plate in my entire American life, I manned up and cut the head off, quietly tucking it beneath the tin foil. Heiki had seasoned it with dill along with other dishes of cured salmon and cucumber salad. It was all really delicious. 

After dinner Aliide retired after a long day of travel, but Heiki suggested the two of us use the sauna outside on the second floor deck. Saunas are tremendously popular in Estonia, often used every day. This one was a glass dome Heiki had built with wooden seating, heated with a wood stove. Perfection. When hot enough, he convinced me to walk barefoot down a pitch dark path in the chilly rain to a small pond for a cold plunge. Despite his explanation of the health benefits I chickened out, but with headlamp on he nonchalantly descended into the icy water. Then we walked back to the sauna for round two. I could get used to Estonian life very quickly.

The next morning, Heiki shared what Aliide and I had been waiting for, a visit to the Stadium Oak.

(on location)
Doug Still
It's beautiful. Yeah, we're standing underneath the canopy. What would you say the diameter is?

Heiki Hanso  17:45
Just diameter? Maybe 120, 130..

Doug Still  17:48
Centimeters.

Heiki Hanso  17:51
Yeah, centimeters.

Doug Still  17:53
That’s 51 inches in diameter, and I estimate about 70 feet tall. Not the biggest Quercus robur in Europe, but quite substantial. The tree is a truly handsome specimen, with a perfectly symmetrical crown of branches. We saw it after leaf drop of course, but in summer the oak casts a dense shade, its leaves on the small side with soft round lobes on the margins. The lowest branches are high up on the trunk to create clearance for frequent activity beneath it, so the tree seems to stand tall with its head up, like a watchman over the old village green, now a football pitch. The solitary placement in the open landscape, with a few rec buildings on the outskirts, is where the oak finds its appealing stature.

(to Heiki)
Now there's a smaller field here, but also the bigger soccer field, like they take these nets away for the bigger games?

Heiki Hanso  18:50
Yeah, that's the soccer field.

Doug Still  18:54
I’ve got to stop calling it soccer. [laughter]

Heiki Hanso  18:56
Is here, the first gate and then the other one, I don't remember how far from each other, but for the small kids and the classes. When there is not too many people, then they just shorten the field, right?

Doug Still  19:14
(Pointing to the larger field) So that's more of an official size football field [yeah] that the tree is right in the middle.

Heiki Hanso  19:19
And you see the tree is sort of west from the center, and a little bit to the one side. [yeah] So it's always there, like - what do you call it - protecting? What's called the team member who is the football defender? [defender] Yeah, so he's one of the defenders, yeah.

Doug Still  19:44
Unless you're going the opposite way. [laughter]

Heiki is the tree’s arborist, and he recently climbed the tree with rope and harness to inspect and prune it.

Heiki Hanso  19:56
It's very even-crowned, and very nice structure. We made some coronet cuts, was a big dead branch, but otherwise there's not much dead wood. In the outer part here, the crown is really good. I like the final result. But as you see right now, without the leaves, you can see where it has been, ages ago, being cut back, like in a modern way of crown reduction.

Doug Still  20:27
Now, are you doing crown reduction for safety, or for tree health purposes?

Heiki Hanso  20:33
For safety, because there are a lot of kids playing around all the time.

Doug Still  20:38
I remarked on the beautiful green moss that coated all the large, twisting branches. 

[yeah] That's because we're close to the ocean, with a lot of moisture in the air.

Heiki Hanso  20:48
A lot of old trees in and around Estonia have moss on, quite common, and that's why we did also, when we climbed a few years ago to do work on it, we also agreed that we don't damage the moss and all this stuff on where you walk on the branch.

Doug Still  21:11
You have to be very careful.  

Heiki Hanso  21:13
Yeah, it’s possible to just be careful. We didn't have to rush.

Doug Still  21:17
Very considerate. I've never heard of an arborist protecting the moss on the branches. [yes] 

One thing that Heikki has been monitoring closely for years is the very large cavity at the base of the trunk.

Heiki Hanso  21:30
So basically, even a tall person like you can go inside.

Doug Still  21:35
Yes, we're looking inside the large cavity. It must be eight feet tall. [yes definitely] 

Both Aliide and I stepped inside it, it was hard to resist communing with the tree in that way. Heiki confirmed the wound was first caused by the Soviet tractors during construction back in the 1940s, a not-so-subtle symbol from the past. As cavities do, it keeps expanding. 

Heiki Hanso  22:03
A few decades back, some boys made a fire in here, and we noticed that after that the tissue got damaged so bad. 

Doug Still
That was not helpful. 

Heiki Hanso
No, and it has happened, I think, two times, when somebody just lit it inside.

Doug Still  22:21
That could have been the end. [yeah]

Aliide Naylor  22:25
I've noticed a few acorns on the ground. Have any kind of baby trees started to spring up?

Heiki Hanso  22:29
Lots of people here are collecting the acorns from this tree to put in the corner of the garden to grow the babies of this tree. So we have lots and lots of descendants. If you find some acorns, you're welcome to take some. 

Aliide Naylor
Smuggle them back into America or England. [laughter]

Heiki Hanso
Due to species protection, you are not allowed. But if you have some, we make a key holder. [laughter]

Doug Still  23:00
I don't think they’ll arrest me. 

We could see and feel Heiki’s love for the Stadium Oak, which he’s climbed and cared for his whole life. It led him to nominate it for Estonian Tree of the Year, propelling it into the European Tree of the Year competition. There’s a deeper, cultural connection at play here though, where trees and forests equal life and survival. 

[theme music]

We’re going to take a short break, but when we return, I sit down with Aliide Naylor to learn how trees illuminate Estonia’s spiritual and political past. 

You’re listening to This Old Tree. 

[music - "Ma vaatan paadist kiikriga," Boris Lehtlaan]

Doug Still  24:00
Aliide, it's so nice to see you again. Thank you for having me and thank you for showing me Saaremaa and the parts of Estonia that you know so well. So we're here to follow up on many of the topics that you spoke about and we chatted about on our trip. You've been researching and exploring Estonian folklore for some time now. Could you describe the project you're working on?

Aliide Naylor  24:33
So I started developing an interest, for want of a better phrase, in the neo-pagan communities in the Baltics around 2017 when I was researching my first book. And at the time, I kind of desperately wanted to focus on them more, as I felt like this spiritual connection to the land had been integral to the region's survival, despite repeated occupations and invasions. And now I'm trying to work on what will hopefully be a second book project that examines the modern iterations of these nature-rooted spiritualities and how integral they are to community, national identity and culture, and also looking at a maybe renewed interest in them amongst the younger generations. Something I'm kind of wary of is that it's quite easy to over romanticize these traditional lifestyles as a sort of counterpoint to all of the worst aspects of modernity. So I'm trying not to fall into that trap, but it's very hard not to find them slightly magical, right?

Doug Still  25:30
Right. In general, is Estonia a religious nation? What's its early relationship with the Christian church?

Aliide Naylor  25:39
So nowadays, it's not a very religious nation at all. The region in general - it was basically the last in Europe to Christianize following the northern crusades. And even then, it was suggested that any moves towards Christianization were very surface level, and the Christian practices that were imposed were often integrated into existing belief systems or temporary and abandoned at the first possible opportunity. The Reformation saw a kind of shift towards Lutheranism, specifically in Estonia, around the 16th to the 18th centuries, which is when religious texts started to be translated into the vernacular. And that was when it became apparent how shallowly, I guess, the earlier Christianizing efforts had penetrated. And of course, the Soviet occupation era saw the widespread implementation of anti Christian legislation in line with state atheism policies. So nowadays, Estonians seem to be kind of apathetic towards religion. Only around 6% of all marriages in Estonia actually take place in the church. And I think according to the last census, only around 58% of the population did not express any specific religious affiliation, so not particularly Christian.

Doug Still  26:48
So it was one of the last areas of Europe to be Christianized. One person I read about was Henry of Livonia. Who was he?

Aliide Naylor  26:57
So Henry of Livonia was a chronicler from the northern crusades. So when the region was being initially - the region was settled by Baltic tribes - such as Livonians, Samogitians, Curonians, Semigallians, Estonians - and they were kind of a loose conglomeration. They weren't the countries Estonia and Latvia as we know them today, but rather these kind of loosely connected tribes. And Henry wasn't really Livonian, but rather, we think a German missionary who recorded the Christianization of the region from a Christian perspective. And I think I recommended Francis Young's book to you, who's a British historian of early modern religion. He's covered Henry's writings about the Baltics in quite a lot of detail. 

But going back to Henry's work, he basically produced the oldest known written document about the history of Estonia and Latvia, and he noted that converts in what is today Latvia quickly washed off baptismals in the river Daugava and continued their pagan practices. And after Christian fleets left, local pagans cut down Christian idols or dug up their dead from churchyards to burn them. And he also noted that in Estonia, an old cult of the trees proved to be especially difficult to eradicate. I found some work, actually, since we were in Estonia together, even as recently as 1944 there was a National University of Life Sciences sociological study, it suggested that 65% of people in 1990 - this was in 1994 -  of people living in Southern Estonia, they believe that trees have souls. So it's been kind of pervasive and ongoing and long term kind of sentiment.

Doug Still  28:35
Is this known as animism?

Aliide Naylor  28:38
Yeah, and it's not just trees, it's also things like rocks. Rocks are often thought to be imbued with maybe the spirits of ancestors in this region.

Doug Still  28:46
The term used to describe a sacred object or place in nature is called a hiis - h-i-i-s. A hiis could be rocks, springs, or other ecological features that have spiritual significance as a natural life force. As Aliide alluded to, embracing pre-Christian pagan ideas has become part of a renewed sense of national identity since the late 19th century. 

(to Aliide)
You had mentioned there was a concept of sacred groves. What are those like? How is that different than a forest or a tree?

Aliide Naylor  29:20
They're more like, they can be in forests, or clearings. In the forest, they're sacred natural sites. They can be near villages. Sometimes they can be on hilltops. And yeah, like you said, inside forests, they're not like the whole forest, but they're parts of the forest, and they can vary very widely in terms of size. The older groves are thought to have been used as early as the late bronze age, so around 1500 years BC, and they are revered, and they're historically places where people can't do things like fell trees or pick berries or swear or misbehave. And there's some debate over this. They're thought to have been maybe sacrificial sites. Perhaps graves, places where people might communicate with dead ancestors. But they are generally considered to kind of mark Estonians’ ancient connection with the land. It just to give you an idea of what a grave can be like. 

There was one that I visited a few years ago that had a board outside that was marked with a traditional eight pointed star, and you were supposed to knock on the board before entering. And then inside there was a clearing which had the remnants of a fire. People had tied ribbons around the trees. And during celebrations, somebody who celebrated there told me that people would leave eggs at the bases of the trees, and I just remember it feeling incredibly peaceful.

Doug Still  30:41
So, yeah, that's nice. This is on the island of Saaremaa?

Aliide Naylor  30:46
This was actually near Rakvere, so near Tallinn, basically.

Doug Still  30:50
So people today can still visit these ancient sacred groves?

Aliide Naylor  30:56
Yeah, I mean, they're very publicly accessible woodland in general, like the green spaces in Estonia are generally accessible to the public.

Doug Still  31:04
They're marked out. You know when you’re in one.

Aliide Naylor  31:08
Depends, but the larger ones, yes.

Doug Still  31:12
Are there any specific stories or folk tales that involve trees that hold particular importance?

Aliide Naylor  31:19
So in Estonia's national epic poem, the Kalevipoeg, is about a man who travels the earth. You know, he's your typical kind of epic national hero, strong and brave, and it covers his adventures and his dedication to his land and people. 

Doug Still
And what's his name? 

Aliide Naylor
Kalevipoeg. It's like son of Kalev, basically.

Doug Still  31:39
The story of Kalevipoeg, spelled K-a-l-e-v-i-p-o-e-g, served as a symbol for the Estonians who were resisting the rule of invaders. Kalevipoeg was not a king or royal knight, but a simple farmer who fought to protect his land. The epic was compiled and published by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald around 1860, and was part of Estonia’s national awakening. It is full of life and magic and fantasy, which makes for an entertaining tale.

Aliide Naylor  32:12
There's one part where he summons his troops to an oak forest and delivers a speech there, as he encourages them to go fight. But trees are also very present in several other folk tales. I've got one book of Estonian folk stories, one of which is about a sacred tree that grants favors only for the man it granted them too. And I think this is a common trope in folk tales to become overly demanding, at which point the tree tells him you'll never be content. Your pride will drive you crazy, and the tree turns him and his wife into a bear. But there are lots and lots of tales which feature trees. Of course, that was just a favorite.

Doug Still  32:46
Great one. So animism is still a part of the lives of Estonians today in some respect.

Aliide Naylor  32:54
It's hard to say how serious it is. You know, Estonia is a highly educated and modern country, and Estonians are pretty realistic and practical people, but there is a widespread desire to celebrate nature and ancient customs and connection to the land.

Doug Still  33:10
Are there any specific folk legends about Saaremaa in particular that take place on the island?

Aliide Naylor  33:17
So the big local myth in Saaremaa is that of Suur Töll, which is a giant who liked to eat cabbages and protect the people from foreign enemies. So obviously, very large, very strong.

Doug Still  33:27
It was easy to be fed if it was just cabbages.  

Aliide Naylor  33:34
Exactly.I think he did eat fish too. You know, there's a statue on the island of him and his wife carrying a huge crate of fish.

Doug Still  33:41
He needs protein.

Aliide Naylor  33:42
Of course, the muscles. Yeah, I thought maybe this legend was connected to the reputation of people from Saaremaa - fierce warriors in medieval times, especially against Crusaders.

Doug Still  33:53
Like an underwater current, Estonia’s sense of its own culture and identity has continued despite being subsumed by occupying forces for a millenia. Led on by the Northern Crusades, the land we now know as Estonia has been ruled by wave after wave of foreign invaders, including Danes, Swedes, Poles, and Germans. Estonia was part of the Russian Empire for two hundred years, from 1710 to 1917. During my trip I stayed for four nights in the “Old Town” section of Estonia’s capital city of Tallinn. The Old Town is an exceptionally intact historic center dating to the medieval period, and it is absolutely charming by the way. It is completely surrounded by a wall up to 52 feet high and 3 feet thick, and still has 26 of the original 46 defensive towers and lots of gates. The fortification museum is extensive and a really cool place to visit. According to one sign I read, by the 16th century Tallinn could be considered one of the most fortified towns in Northern Europe. They needed it. Defense was a constant concern, though it doesn’t seem to have been very successful. 

Early in the 20th century, Estonia achieved its first independence in 1918 after fighting a bloody war against Soviet Russia and German forces, with aid from Britain, Finland, and Denmark. A period of national prosperity, it lasted only 22 years, as World War II consumed the small country as it had the rest of Europe. The Soviet Union was deeply concerned with the threat of Germany’s expansion eastward. After the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Germany and the Soviets signed a non-aggression treaty called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that put Estonia in the “Soviet sphere.” Moscow demanded military bases in Estonia, which was a pretext for a full takeover in June, 1940. The result of this first occupation was severe repression of the Estonian people through arrests, executions, deportations to Soviet prison camps, and a general climate of terror. The small country was perhaps at its lowest, most difficult point in a long history of oppression. I asked Aliide about the particular role of Saaremaa in the war.

(to Aliide)
What was the strategic importance of Saaremaa during the war and afterward, what happened on the island?

Aliide Naylor  36:37
So, I mean, the islands have been battlegrounds and sites of strategic importance for a long time, and even in World War I Saaremaa was instrumental in military campaigns such as Operation Albion. That was when Germany believed that capturing Estonia's western islands would leave what was then Petrograd - St Petersburg - weak and open to attack. But in World War II, it remained important in terms of control of the Baltic Sea region. 

So a great deal of the fighting was on a long peninsula on the southwest of the island, and that basically guarded the entrance to the Gulf of Riga. So this peninsula was home to some extremely fierce fighting as the Nazis and Soviets wrestled for control over it. So in 1940 to 1941 the Soviets violently occupied Estonia. They deported civilians, and you saw Kuressaare Castle in the courtyard there [beautiful] a medieval castle, really, really beautiful, and the views from the ramparts really over the bay. It's just, [it's stunning] - stunning - a bit of history. So the Soviets executed and tortured Estonians during the first occupation there in the courtyard. And there are some extremely horrifying and very graphic accounts. And the victims, they were overwhelmingly people connected to the local authorities, schools, and governance so that Soviets could basically install their own puppets. It was just part of their efforts, intense efforts, to eradicate Estonian national culture.

Doug Still  38:05
When Nazi Germany took control of Estonia in 1941, things got more complicated. Many Estonians first viewed them as liberators, because anything was better than the brutal Soviet occupation. Many Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians joined the German army and fought for the Nazis. But as you can guess, the Germans were not about to give Estonia independence, and began their own version of exploitation and brutal repression. They murdered tens of thousands of people, including Soviet prisoners, ethnic Estonians, Romani people, and about 1,000 Estonian Jews. Another 10,000 Jews from other parts of Europe were sent to Estonian labor camps as well, where most perished.

Fast forward to September, 1944 when the Soviets retook Estonia from the retreating Nazis. They were back, as ruthless as before. There was a mass exodus of refugees, with tens of thousands of people fleeing by boat, train, or any means necessary. As described in the Occupation Museum in Tallinn which had an example of a boat they would have taken to sea,, many people died trying to escape the Red Army. Many of the refugees who survived made it to Germany and Sweden, some eventually relocating to other countries never to return. Aliide herself had a story about her grandmother.

Aliide Naylor  39:33
So my mother's side is from Saaremaa, and my grandmother was born on the island, but she was actually based in Tallinn in the 1940s. She escaped on top of a train and ultimately ended up in an UNRRA, which is the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration camp in the British sector of Germany. And her family, so her siblings and their kids, they took boats from Saaremaa to Sweden, and I remember one talking about how the mast collapsed on her ship during the stormy night crossing, which sounded extremely harrowing.

Doug Still  40:05
Thank you for answering that. 

Aliide Naylor
It's okay. 

Doug Still
When the Soviets returned, a chief directive was to root out anyone who had fought against them the last three years, or anyone part of the current resistance. Where were they to hide? A mythic story developed.

(to Aliide)
Who were the Forest Brothers?

Aliide Naylor  40:26
So the second Soviet occupation saw resistance in the form of guerrilla forces, but simultaneous intensifying crackdowns at the Soviet end to assert Moscow's authority over the Baltics. And the Forest Brothers, they were basically these partisan movements that emerged in each Baltic state. So they were essentially called the Forest Brothers in Latvia and in Estonia and in Lithuania. And they were armed resistance movements who were in operation from around 1944 to 1953. In Estonia, they totaled somewhere between 10,000 to 16,000 - the most often cited figure I see is 14,000 to 15,000. And yeah, the forest was historically seen as a place of safety. People hid. Hid in the forest during the crusades too, I understand.

Doug Still  41:14
I see, so there's a long history of hiding in the forest.

Aliide Naylor  41:17
Yeah, and just knowing the region, knowing the terrain, lots of parts of the Baltics are quite swampy, so knowing which parts of the terrain are dangerous and which parts aren't gives the locals a huge advantage. 

Doug Still
And who were they? 

Aliide Naylor
Well, they were this guerrilla resistance, essentially against the Soviets, who were trying to brutally eradicate them. And they were largely eradicated by the mid 1950s. They were composed of former intellectuals, farmers, policemen, military personnel, and they were aiming to restore the hard won independence of their respective countries. And they had the support of the local population, who usually helped to hide them and ensured they had an ongoing supply of food or information.

Doug Still  41:59
So they were local. They were Estonians.  

Aliide Naylor  42:03
They were just Estonians, right. People who were patriots who didn't want foreign invaders basically taking over their country. And so across the Baltics, they were around 50,000 I believe, in total.

Doug Still  42:18
Wow. How did they survive in the forest?

Aliide Naylor  42:21
Locals could help them. Maybe they'd bring them food or information.

Doug Still  42:25
People were helping them. 

Aliide Naylor  42:29
Yeah, they were. exactly. And they could maybe dig - they were digging trenches. They were actively fighting against Soviet occupation forces and the Red Army. Maybe there were others who were less active, who would distribute leaflets and raise national flags. But also the myth was just really important as a symbol of hope for people in the Baltic states, and that kind of persisted through the rest of the Soviet occupation too.

Doug Still  42:50
The myth of the forest Brothers has had a powerful effect on people of Estonia.

Aliide Naylor  42:57
Yeah. It provided hope, and it continues even today. I mean, I think I mentioned this to you in Saaremaa a bit. I was at the Song Festival, which happens every five years in Estonia. It's a big national gathering of people who come together and sing national songs. And in addition to the program songs, in between them, the people would break out into kind of a cappella versions of other songs, one of them being a Forest Brothers song that, I think it captured the spirit of the time. You know, it was quite... it was basically suggesting that they would refuse to live on their knees and serve Russians. And it seemed quite a powerful, quite a powerful sentiment, given the situation today.

Doug Still  43:36
Does everybody know the Forest Brothers song? 

Speaker 2  43:55
Everyone there did.

[Music - "Metsavendade laul (sõnadega) - Forest Brothers' Song," Untsakad]

Doug Still  44:17
When Aliide and I sat at Heiki Hanso’s kitchen table to interview him, he surprised us with an incredible bit of information.

(to Heiki)
Now, you mentioned that there's some family history.

Heiki Hanso  44:28
My grandfather was one of the forest brothers.

[Theme music]

Doug Still  44:33
Grab a tissue. When we come back from a short break, he tells the story of his grandfather, the Forest Brother. And then we'll learn what he did to turn the Stadium Oak into a national icon. This is This Old Tree.

[Music - "Ma vaatan paadist kiikriga," Boris Lehtlaan]

Heiki Hanso  45:12
Yeah, it happened so my grandfather was in.. was it maybe May, 1944… when he heard the group of Soviet soldiers come to his work in Tallinn. He was working in some telegraph, some engineer, something. And he heard in a corridor his name was shouted out. And then he managed to run to the basement and scroll over the coal piles to this small window, and managed to get away through this. And then he walked just under 200 kilometers from Tallinn to Pärnu, where his home was. Then he managed to join some other people who were hiding in the forest for three years. He was captured by a traitor in their village three years later. So he was captured, and he had a hiding spot in the barn, like double walls. But somebody knew where he was hiding, and he was given up.

Doug Still  46:32
Word had got ‘round that the Soviet soldiers were not only arresting people but looting all they could. Young and married with two small children, Heike’s grandfather thought of the possession most important to him in that desperate moment.

Heiki Hanso  46:47
When he was arrested, he was wearing his golden wedding ring. The Soviets, they robbed all the people and took all the valuables. He was hands behind, tied behind back, he was sitting in the corner of the barn. So he managed to put his hands together and get this ring off his finger. And then he hid in the dirt behind where he was sitting, behind him.

Doug Still  47:23
He was sitting, and he just dug a little hole and put the ring there. 

Heiki Hanso
That's correct, yes. 

Doug Still
And what happened to him?

Heiki Hanso  47:30
Well, he was arrested and then taken to the most - what it was called - hard labor camp, maybe in Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan] Kazakhstan, yeah. And then he was there, I think, for five, six years. And then, I think after Stalin died, 1953, some of the political prisoners were let out from the prison. But they [had to] serve 25 plus five years, so they was not let to the home country back. So they had to sort of stay there to serve Soviet Union.

Doug Still  48:24
When his wife learned that he was out of prison, but not free to leave, she and the children went to be with him in Kazakhstan.

Heiki Hanso  48:31
Our grandmother went after he was released from the prison. Our grandmother went with my uncle and aunt - one week by trains and stuff -  to stay there in Kazakhstan with my grandfather for, I think, for two years. And then they was released, and they had the permission to go back to Estonia. [wow] So every year, some of them political prisoners, they started to get permission to go back.   

Doug Still  49:08
So they got away. When did he come back?

Heiki Hanso  49:12
I think it was maybe ‘56, yeah.

Doug Still  49:16
When he finally got home to Estonia, Heiki’s grandfather went straight to the barn.

Heiki Hanso  49:22
So after years he returned, he managed to find his ring and [wow], yeah, it's a great story to remember. 

Doug Still  49:34
That’s a great story.

Heiki's father was born a few years afterward. The story, and the appreciation for freedom, remains in the family.

Sixty-five years and two generations later, the Stadium Oak of Orissaare had a contest to win. The drama doesn’t equal the weight of what happened during the war era, but nonetheless it carries a bit of that history with it. Like Heiki’s grandfather, the tree had resisted the Soviets and survived. As an arborist and an Orisaaran, Heiki knew he was the one to share the story with the rest of Estonia and beyond.

The European Tree of the Year contest was the opportunity to do that. It’s an annual voting competition organized by the Environmental Partnership Association, an international consortium of six foundations from eastern Europe that support community projects to protect the environment and support local communities and society. Based in the Czech Republic, the nonprofit invites countries to nominate one tree each to pit against others in an annual contest. Mainly, it’s a chance to celebrate trees and share their stories.

Heiki Hanso  50:51
Normally, before the candidate goes to the European Tree of the Year contest, inside the country there is also an election. That winner is going to represent the country, then, in the European [contest].

Aliide Naylor  51:05
But in this case, it was different.  

Heiki Hanso  51:09
Yes, as the timetable of the program was already past that moment that we could have time to do the Estonian competition first.

Doug Still  51:23
So luckily, Heiki and his company were allowed to nominate the tree on behalf of Estonia, without a national competition. They were in, but they had work to do. They suddenly had to figure out how to get people to vote for the tree online. It wasn’t easy.

Heiki Hanso  51:39
Yeah, me and my buddy, we did it together, Hannes. I want to say thanks to him. Also, he was the IT support those days. 

Doug Still
IT support. 

Heiki Hanso
Well, yeah, definitely. Within the 10 years of this last decade, social media and the IT stuff has obviously made a huge step since 10 years ago. It was different, but possible. So Hannes was reporting with all these… how to get this information around and contacting people and…

Doug Still  52:19
Right, because you had to get out the vote. 

Heiki Hanso
Yeah. 

Doug Still
How did you get out the vote?

Heiki Hanso  52:25
Well, actually, as you see, looking around, we have many trees in Estonia, and the tree is very common. It was very hard to, sort of, get people attached to the idea. Even the voting is really easy in the European Tree of the Year contest. It maybe takes like, 10 or 15 seconds. But lots of people just won't bother. 

Doug Still  52:53
Because here they're like, “We have trees everywhere. Why do we care about another tree?”

Heiki Hanso  52:57
And obviously the Estonian population is only like 1.3 million. So compared to the huge, large countries - UK, Poland, Germany, Belgium - they have 10s of millions of people instead. Some successful   campaign would already make a huge difference, as you see nowadays.

Doug Still  53:20
Their social media presence brought some votes, but it wasn’t nearly enough. With one week left, they were behind.

Heiki Hanso  53:28
The contest is going one month. You can vote for three weeks. It used to be so that you could see how many votes any tree contestant has, but the last week was blind week. We had it so that you couldn't see anybody's score, which made it really stressful. Of course, nobody knew how is the other doing, and what kind of secret weapons they have in the back pocket, you know, to get the scores up or the initiatives up. Then, obviously, I was also really anxious or in agony. I wanted to obviously do the best.  

Doug Still  54:14
It didn't help that it was a national holiday. 

Heiki Hanso  54:20
It was 2015, Estonian Independence Day, the 24th of February. All the buildings, supermarkets, they were closed. So, the end of February was the whole contest. And then I thought, there must be, I must do something.

Doug Still  54:39
Then Heike struck upon an idea. 

Heiki Hanso  54:42
I was in Tallinn in my garage, and then I had some bits and pieces and plywood and paint and some stuff. And I thought, okay, I want to get attention. And then I started. I invited some friends. We built the trolley, which is sort of like a copy of the stadium with the oak on top.

Doug Still  55:06
With wood and materials he had on hand at his work place in Tallinn, they built a replica of the Orisaare Stadium on a pull cart. It had a mini oak tree in the middle of it, the Stadium Oak. He wheeled it out into the street.

Heiki Hanso  55:20
So I started to walk from Tallinn to Saaremaa to get this oak tree some attention.

Doug Still  55:27
How many kilometers is that?

Heiki Hanso  55:29
It's about 200.

Doug Still  55:31
So you walked 200 kilometers…

Heiki Hanso  55:34
…pulling a tree on it two and a half days. And then my ankles were already, like, really swollen up because I never had done such heavy duty hardcore stuff, pulling this trolley behind me.

Doug Still  55:52
That is dedication that makes me want to go back and vote for you! 

People drove by and honked and wanted to know what was going on, but that wasn't all. 

(to Heiki)
Now, you mentioned something that happened that put it over the top and got all the votes to come in, I believe.

Heiki Hanso  56:08
During this walk, we made a live broadcast that had a GoPro camera attached to the trolley, which had a battery and live stream to YouTube. So the information starts spreading. We got more viewers, more viewers, and then social media, and then our president, Thomas Hendrik Ilves, noticed this and then he made a post on his Facebook.

Doug Still  56:40
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the President of Estonia in 2015, got involved himself.

Heiki Hanso  56:46
And I think that made, that was the decider. After that, all the VIPs and celebrities, they started to share this information, because it was something, like, unique, to be honest. It was a unique thing.

Doug Still  57:05
You pulled this trolley. It got on the news and [yeah] the President of Estonia saw it [yeah] and he posted it [yeah]. And suddenly the whole country was behind you.

Heiki Hanso  57:16
Not the whole country, but…[laughter]

Doug Still  57:21
…the tree loving part of the country [yeah]. That's amazing. And then it won.

Heiki Hanso  57:29
It did indeed. 2015 Tree of the Year.

Doug Still  57:35
The tree’s story, along with all the history it represented, had struck a chord with modern Estonians. And from people across Europe and around the world.

Aliide Naylor  57:44
Do you know if you had any supporters outside of Estonia?

Heiki Hanso  57:46
Yes, we had votes from Japan, from New Zealand, from Australia, from all over Canada, the US, yeah.

Doug Still  57:55
Heiki and his buddy Hannes accepted the award at a formal ceremony in The Hague with representatives of the EU Parliament and the news media present.

Heiki Hanso  58:06
And there was obviously all these countries together who participated in Europe. A very smart evening.

Doug Still  58:17
You got dressed up?

Heiki Hanso  58:19
Of course. And it was my birthday, the 21st of April. So it was the best birthday present ever, I think, I got in my life. That these kind of emotions and feelings, and heavy, heavy work paid off.

Aliide Naylor  58:35
That's great. I remember you saying it was one of the greatest achievements of your life. Like, how did you feel in that moment?

Heiki Hanso  58:43
I think it was definitely - I think it still is, and it might be forever - my best achievement, achievement could be.

Doug Still  58:54
What does the Stadium Oak mean to you personally?

Heiki Hanso  58:58
That's the tree of my life. I think it will be. I've been climbing 1000s and 1000s of trees, I think, but definitely, that's my, that's my tree.

Doug Still  59:13
Thank you so much. 

The award and the news coverage changed things back in Orissaare for a while. Just ask Andla.

Andla Rüütel  59:22
But after this competition it was so that, two, three, maybe five years was so, that every summer, we are making some interviews from the BBC or from German newspapers. This big competition was actually quite good to Orissaare tourism.

Doug Still  59:55
Andla shared a poignant view of trees and forests.

Andla Rüütel  59:59
I love the forest, yeah, and I think most of Estonians really love the forest. We have no fear about it. And when we have mental breakdowns or mental problems, the first place where we are going is the forest. When I have a bad day, then I have to go in the forest. And then I go, I just walk down with my dog, and it's so that it’s the first place where I am going. The head is full of thoughts, and it's like [makes a sound and gesture describing thoughts whooshing out of her head). And I think I am not the only one. It's normal for Estonians.

Aliide Naylor
Thanks, I think so too.

Doug Still  1:00:53
And as for Aliide, meeting and traveling withe her is something I won’t soon forget. She is part of the Estonian diaspora. 

[Theme music]

(to Aliide)
Well, so great to see you again. Thanks so much for sharing this story and sharing your research.

Aliide Naylor  1:01:10
Thank you for being interested in it. Your enthusiasm was, when we were on the island, it was very infectious. So I really appreciated taking you around, too.

Doug Still  1:01:18
Yeah, and I really look forward to the book. Thank you. 

Aliide Naylor
Thanks so much. 

Doug Still
The Stadium Oak still stands today, a hiis that symbolizes strength and perseverance. Its story has a warning to it, but also a trolley full of hope.

[music - "Isegi unes," Stig Rästa]

Outro  1:01:50
Thank you so much for listening, tree lovers, I hope you enjoyed the story. And thanks to ALL the people I met in Estonia who were so kind, especially Heiki Hanso and Andla Ruutel who spoke about the Stadium Oak and shared their histories. You both were so generous. A special thanks to Aliide Naylor, without whom this episode would never have happened. Links to her book and other references are in the show notes. Martha Douglas-Osmundson provided the voice-over for Andla. Information about the traditional songs we played are in the show notes, and you’re currently listening to music by Stig Rasta.  Theme music is by Dee Lee. Visit the show website at thisoldtree.show, transcripts will become available. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to see photos and get hints about what’s coming next. The podcast is now a sponsored project of the New England Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture. Visit newenglandisa.org to learn more about this great organization. 

Thanks again for listening. I’m Doug Still, and this is This Old Tree.

​